[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 18 (Tuesday, January 30, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1033-H1040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WHAT IS GOOD FOR AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the
honor of being recognized to address you on the floor of the House of
the United States House of Representatives, the people's House, this
people's House and this new day, this new dawn that was pledged to come
to this 110th Congress.
As you may or may not know, Mr. Speaker, I spend many hours here on
the floor in these Special Orders and in debate on bills and in 1-
minutes and in 5-minutes as we engage in this dialogue and raise the
issue of what is good for America.
{time} 1745
One of the very important things about determining what's good for
America is to have a process for America that is conducive to the right
result, and the right result in most cases, we will agree, I believe,
would be the will of the people: the will of the people properly
informed, the will of people properly educated, and the will of the
people that have access through the first amendment rights to all the
information and all the knowledge possible.
But, then, I would point out that we do not live in a democracy. As
much as I have said about the reflection of the voice or the people
here in the people's House, each one of us does have an obligation to
listen carefully and attentively to our constituents, to the people in
this country, and not just confined within our districts, but to listen
to the Nation as a whole and focus on the interests of our district.
But sometimes we have to put the Nation ahead of, sometimes, the will
of our district.
But this is a constitutional Republic that we serve in, not a
democracy. I point out that our Founding Fathers had a significant
concern, and I will say even a literal fear of democracies.
On one of my earlier trips out here to Washington, DC, quite some
years ago, I visited the National Archives on my first visit. As I
waited in line to go around and be able to stand there and gaze upon
the Declaration of Independence, upon the Constitution, upon the Bill
of Rights in their original form, the original documents that our
Founding Fathers placed their hands to and pledged their lives, their
fortunes and their sacred honor, as I waited to view that for the first
time, on display at the National Archives was a display of Greek
artifacts.
The Greek artifacts that had come from 2- to 3,000 years ago in the
era where the closest thing that there has been to a pure democracy
from the standpoint of the Greek city-states, where of-age males would
gather together, and they would debate; they would debate the issues of
the day. They had a number of things they put in place for stopgap. One
of the things they found out was, you will recognize the term
``demagogue.''
``Demagogue'' is a term that we use occasionally in our vernacular,
perhaps here on the floor reluctantly, but also throughout our dialogue
across the country. There is not a lot of history on demagogues. It is
hard to Google demagogue and to become an expert, to look under
amazon.com and to come up with real books that are written on real
facts that identify demagogues in the Greek era. They are almost
nonexistent in this Nation's literature, at least so far as I have been
able to identify.
But what the Founders knew and what young Americans growing up today
and, really, all of its citizens should have an understanding of is
that in that purer form of democracy in the Greek-city state, they had
Greek demagogues who had such an oratorical skill that they could stand
up in front of that small coliseum, so to speak, and make their pitch
in such a passionate, logical and rational way that it would move the
emotions of the Greeks within that city.
They would not necessarily analyze the information behind that
debate. They would not necessarily analyze the data, the calculations.
They maybe were not even thinking for themselves. But what they would
do is, they would
[[Page H1034]]
listen to the demagogue that had that ability to move the masses with
their dialogue. That, sometimes, in fact, often, took the Greeks off on
a path that was not necessarily the best path for them, because they
didn't stop, step back and think about where they were going. They were
moved by the emotion.
So a demagogue would be someone, then, who had that ability and that
skill. When they were identified as detrimental to the best interests
of the city-state, then they had a blackball system. That blackball
system, again, as I recall it, was that they would each go through, and
there would be a, let us call it a black marble and a white marble, and
there would be one large gourd to drop the voting marble in and then
one to discard your empty in. So each voting member of a city-state got
two, a black marble and a white marble.
As they went through there and as they dropped that marble in, they
said, I want to keep this individual here in the city-state because I
like his position, or he is good for us, or he helps out with the
knowledge he has, whatever the reason might be, the same way we vote
for or against Presidential candidates in a lot of ways. They would
drop a white ball if they wanted to keep him, into the voting.
It would actually be a piece of pottery, a smaller-necked piece of
pottery, actually. Then they would discard the black ball in another
piece of pottery. So no one knew how they voted; it was a secret
ballot.
But if that demagogue received three black balls dropped down in the
voting piece of pottery, then that would be all that was required from
the entire city to banish that demagogue from the city for 7 years.
That was one of the ways they protected themselves from the emotions of
a democracy.
Mr. Speaker, I bring this up because quite often, I think, in the
classrooms of America, it is taught consistently and continuously that
this is a democracy. We toss the term around, we are in a democracy.
This is a democracy that goes on over and over and over again, and I
always argue, no, this is a constitutional Republic.
Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first
time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of
government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but
had the representation of democracy in it. That is why we are a
constitutional Republic. That is why we are called Representatives here
in the United States Congress, because we each represent about 600,000
people.
It isn't the 600,000 people, those that are qualified and registered,
those that go to vote will select each one of us, and then it is our
job to be their voice here. But the first thing that we owe our
constituents is not to put our finger in the wind and listen to the
polls. It isn't our job necessarily to put our ear to the ground and
try to stay ahead of the moving public opinion, but it is our job to
listen to that public opinion.
It is also our job to be involved in all of the dialogue here and
have access to all this information that is available to us here in
this capital city, the information center of the world, from my
experience. We owe our constituents and all American people our best
judgment as we serve in this constitutional Republic.
The voice of these Members here in Congress is essential. It is
essential for the functionality of a republic, and it is essential for
the functionality of this great Nation. In this system of government
that we have now shaped, a tried and true system for more than 200
years, we found a way to use this process of gathering the information
and the data and the input from our constituents who come through my
office every day. And I sit down with them every day that we are open
for business here, and it is for me to gather that kind of input and
information. Then I exchange back with them the things that I know
about policy from sitting here.
Then we have discussions about, well, here is our budget, these are
our limitations, these are the policy questions. Here is the legality,
here are some of the constitutional constraints that we have, and your
needs are this. So how do we shape this together so that we can come
forward with a proposal that meets the needs of my constituents or
anyone's constituents, stays within the framework of our budget and the
Constitution and moves this Nation forward to our destiny?
Those are the questions that we are obligated to struggle to resolve
here in this Congress, and we have developed a process by which we have
many, many public hearings. We bring forward in the public hearings
witnesses that testify into the record under oath, so that we can rely
on the accuracy and the honesty and the veracity of their statements.
That is some of the information.
A lot of the other government reports and other data that come from
nongovernmental organizations and individual citizens and the letters
that come every day and the e-mails that come every day and the phone
calls that come every day, we put that all together. We sort that. We
synthesize that. We go to the subcommittee or the full committee for
the hearings. We ask the appropriate questions so that we can probe
into these issues to represent our constituents.
Then, after the hearing process is done, then a bill comes forward, a
bill comes out through the subcommittee process for a markup, and that
markup always must allow legitimate germane amendments in order. It is
not just a theory; it is a tried and true proven fact. The reason for
amendments is to improve the legislation.
The first term that you run into, as any, one step forward, to become
a legislator, whatever level of government might be, whatever political
subdivision it might be, is the law of unintended consequences. That is
what happens when any of us, most often in our youthful idealism, come
charging into the legislative process. We say, I have a law I want to
pass, this is what I want it to be.
You write that down, put it into the right format, and you submit
that into the process, and immediately the wake-up call is, well, what
about this implication and that? What happens when you unfund this side
of it. What happens when you don't have law enforcement on the other
side? What happens when you punish more people than you were trying to
help because you didn't think of all the aspects?
Well, that is the law of unintended consequences. That is what
happens when you have a legislative process that circumvents or usurps
this tried and true, more than two-centuries-old process that we have
here in the United States Congress.
This constitutional Republic cannot sustain itself if we do not have
a regular order of doing business that guarantees the rights of each
Member to be heard, for each Member to bring their judgment to the
hearing process, to probe the witnesses, to put into the record the
background that they want to gather from the witnesses they choose, as
well, to offer amendments at committee and subcommittee level and at
the level up at the Rules Committee.
This is all a process to perfect legislation, to reduce, and,
ideally, eliminate that Murphy's Law of unintended consequences, and
also to improve the quality of the legislation so that it is far more
effective than it may be as if just one person with their limited
vision, their limited knowledge, limited background and limited
understanding could bring to this legislative body.
I have to point out, the system and the process that I have described
here is anything, but what has been taking place in this 110th
Congress. This is the 110th Congress that was promised to be the most
open and the term, I believe, was ``democratic Congress in history.''
The leadership was going to set up a system that had rules, that
allowed for amendments at every level, that allowed for open dialogue,
that allowed for open hearings. In fact, the Speaker of the House is
clearly on record time after time after time, making those kinds of
pledges.
Well, I will point out that has not been the case. I will get back to
the facts of that here in a moment.
What I would like to do is illustrate this poster that tells us what
has been going on here in this new 110th Congress, which began on the
4th day of January when we organized and first brought forth the rules.
The opinion that this Congress had to live by was the promise,
campaign promise, and they won the majority. In the first 100 hours,
six pieces of legislation shall pass; we will do this for the American
people, was the argument.
[[Page H1035]]
So we have two different ways of keeping time. The American people
would wonder, well, the first 100 hours, if that promise of doing these
six pieces of legislation in the first 100 hours is so sacrosanct that
you have to suspend, maybe temporarily, and maybe not temporarily, the
regular order that we call it here. This really is the entire process
that I have described: the suspension of hearings, subcommittee
meetings, full committee meetings, rules, consideration of amendments,
and amendments being allowed on the floor, being debated, so the
American people can understand what this body is doing.
That entire process has been suspended, and it has been suspended
because the argument was made by the incoming leadership that those six
pieces of legislation couldn't be passed within the first 100 hours if
we went to a regular order and allowed any Member to have any voice in
trying to improve any piece of that legislation.
So here we are this first 100 hours. I thought, well, all right, if
the promise of 100 hours is sacrosanct, and it is so important that
this legislation that has never been done in the history of America has
to be done in the first 100 hours, if that is so important, then we
ought to know at least what the criteria are for turning it on and
turning it off. We ought to be able to know when that 100 hours is
over, when we will go back to regular order, and the people who have
campaigned and been elected to legitimately represent their 600,000
people will have a choice in this Congress to improve and perfect
legislation.
So I started the clock, and I have kept this clock from the
beginning. You know, there are only two legitimate ways to count time.
One of them would be the 110th Congress began when we gaveled in here
on the 4th day of January. You could just let the clock run all through
the day, the night, the next day, and it will just essentially tick
when we get sine die, gavel out of the 110th Congress roughly 2 years
from now.
I don't think that is necessarily a fair and legitimate way, that
keeping track of 100 hours is sacrosanct. We may give them a little bit
different way to do that. Let us make it the legitimate way of keeping
time, was my proposal.
Fairly simply, when the gavel comes in here in the morning, and we
gavel in to start our day, and we start with the prayer and the pledge,
that is the beginning of this congressional day. When we finish these
Special Orders and there is a motion to adjourn, and you adjourn this
Chamber, click, with the stopwatch, time is over, that is how many
hours it is for that day.
Well, the Pelosi clock has a different way of keeping time. But just
by comparison--and first I want to point out that those six pieces of
legislation were passed not in the form I thought they were going to
come to the floor in, probably not the form that the American people
thought that they would be passed in, but a form that had those six
titles of that legislation that came to this floor, passed within the
first real 100 hours of legislation.
{time} 1800
And that ended on a Friday at 11:44 a.m. when the real clock ticked
over at 100 hours. But the Pelosi clock which was on the Web page, that
was put up so that they would have all the time that they wanted to
have to get this legislation done, and we just took a little picture of
that. That clock went to 42 hours and 25 minutes. That is how much, Mr.
Speaker, had been expired on the Pelosi clock.
So one can only presume that this clock was a slow clock. The Pelosi
office refuses to grant us any criteria as to when they turn their
clock on and when they turn their clock off. The only thing we know is
this clock was not going to run up to 100 hours until those six pieces
of legislation were passed. So it is kind of a backwards figuring
thing, but now it has been pulled down from the Web site of the
Speaker, but that was the end of the game.
So when that 100 hours is over, the request was give us some time,
give us some patience. We need to have the suspension of our rules. We
are going to have to go to this draconian process that no Member has a
voice in anything until these six pieces of legislation are passed. We
are going to have to go to that to get our six pieces passed in the
first 100 hours.
Well, the six pieces are passed. The 100 hours now, it is about 148-
point-something actually, where it is going to be 149 when we finish
this up. That is how many hours that we have invested here in this
110th Congress. But we are still under draconian martial law in this
Congress.
We are bringing to the floor of the United States Congress tomorrow,
and I don't mean me, but the leadership on the other side of the aisle
is bringing an omnibus spending bill. That omnibus spending bill is
coming to the floor, $463 billion, without a single hearing, without a
single subcommittee or committee meeting, without a markup, without an
amendment; and we are going to spend $463 billion out of here tomorrow
on 30 minutes of debate from the dissenting side and 30 minutes of
debate from the proponents' side, and the taxpayers are going to take
the hit.
And I feel sorry, Mr. Speaker, for the American people. And I feel
really sorry for the freshmen that came to this Congress, especially
the large class of Democrats who no doubt said, I will be your voice in
Congress. I promise you that you haven't been represented well. I will
be effective. When I go there, I will be heard. I am going to delve
into all of this policy and I will be there. You will see that come out
in the language. It will go into law.
But to this day come to the floor and I will yield to anyone, any
freshman especially, who could come down here and say, I went to a
hearing and I offered an amendment in a subcommittee markup or in a
full committee or I am going to be allowed to offer an amendment here
on the floor and it is going to improve some legislation.
I think there was a freshman that ran some legislation here last
week. I just don't know if she ever got to see the language before she
came to the floor to be the sitting duck for the criticism, for the
narrow debate that we had.
That is the tone of where we are. The American people are being
cheated by this process. And I will be very happy to yield to the man
who is a judge of that, Judge Louie Gohmert from Texas.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa, my good
friend (Mr. King), for yielding.
As may be known, I was a history major in college. I have studied a
great deal of government history, different countries; and I would ask
if the gentleman from Iowa might engage me in a colloquy to answer one
question, if you are aware of the difference between the process that
the former Soviet Union arrived at in order to appropriate money and
the process that has been used to appropriate $463 billion tomorrow.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I am going to have to guess. I am going to turn
this back to you for a definitive answer. My speculation would be, Mr.
Gohmert, that Duma probably didn't see it and maybe we get to see it
for a pro forma vote, or am I wrong?
Mr. GOHMERT. Well, obviously, none of us have seen it. It got posted
and we have got people trying to make sense of the 140-or-so pages. But
the main difference that I can tell, and this is just my opinion, but
the main difference that I can tell is that the Soviets never promised
to have an open, fair, transparent democratic process to appropriate
money. That is the big difference I can see. Because that is what we
have here.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from
Texas for that insightful input. In other words, he is so gentle and
subtle when he said the Soviets kept their promise because they didn't
make one.
And the thing that I am addressing here, Mr. Speaker, is that there
were a lot of promises made, and the integrity in this system, that is
what you have to function in this body. We have to give our word and we
have got to keep our word. And when we do that, this system functions.
When you give your word and you don't keep your word, the system breaks
down. And the people that pay the price for that are the American
people.
So I would submit that all of that whole series of promises were
subordinated to the 100 hours' promise, which turned out to be 42 hours
and 25 minutes. Fine. I am going to grant that that stuff got done in
100 real hours.
[[Page H1036]]
Actually, it got done just underneath the 100 real hours. But the clock
has ticked over by anybody's measure. It is over 100 hours. And there
was never a justification for it anyway. I mean, I want to be on record
in this Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker. There is not a justification
for expediting the process at the expense of the voice of the people.
But that is what has been done. Well, it has been done at least under
the promise that when the 100 hours is up and the six pieces of
legislation are passed, we are going to then try to keep our promise on
the most open Congress in history. As we know, you cannot expedite
legislation very well in the process that we have now and be able to
improve it.
So what they have done is they have brought this 150-or-more-page
bill that was just first available last night at 11:03 p.m. on the
Internet. Some of our staff had actually quit work by that time and
gone home to bed; so some of them didn't find that until this morning.
But of those 150 or 160 pages, in there is 463-point-something billion
dollars of spending and it has changed a fair amount of line items, and
what it does is it increases the spending from the Republican plan by
$7 billion, Mr. Speaker. Seven billion. And it changes the resources
that are committed. They go back to the districts in some places.
We even have some locations, in our short little time of looking at
this, where we believe that because they have underfunded and this
budget has gone on now for almost half a year that there will be some
agencies that may well have to pay back because of this omnibus
spending bill. And they will come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor tomorrow,
and they will say, Well, this is a CR. This is a continuing resolution.
And a continuing resolution being that you pass a resolution that says
we are going to keep funding government at the current level and all of
its line item appropriations until such time as we can get the Senate
to act.
And I have to say that the Senate needs to act. We passed nearly
every single one of the appropriation bills last year, sent them over
to the Senate, where they sat. And so that is one of the reasons that
we end up with this ugly monstrosity of an omnibus spending bill.
But it would be one thing to pass a continuing resolution and say
that stuff has been through the subcommittee, committee, the markup
process, been to the floor, at Appropriations. We had worked our will
on all of that. It is a different Congress, but we had worked our will
in the 109th Congress. It would be one thing to pass a continuing
resolution to meet those standards because that has been due diligence
at least. It is quite another to take all of these dollars, roll them
all up, package them up, rewrite them, and then throw them out here on
the narrowest of notice, $463 billion, and then say, well, there won't
be any input and there won't be any amendments and it is going to be
strictly an up-or-down vote, and you get 30 minutes to tell us why it
is a bad idea and try to convince our people whose arms are twisted up
behind their shoulder blades that they are going to have to vote for
it.
And there they sit with a large class of freshmen. Some of them
served in State legislatures. In fact, I would speculate that most of
them have. And I would also speculate that not a single one of them has
experienced a process that was so closed in its loop, that was so
narrow in its scope, that was so draconian that the collective wisdom
of 435 Members of Congress and all the staff and all the constituents
and all the media input all goes for naught.
I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, and I
will pick up whenever I need to. Thank you, Mr. Gingrey.
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for
leading this Iowa Special Order, particularly in regard to what is
going to be on the floor of this body tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and that
is this $463 billion monstrosity that, as the gentleman has already
pointed out, gives no opportunity for Members of this body to have any
input.
We heard all this rhetoric, as we started the 110th, about the need
to pass those six per six bumper sticker issues that the Democratic
majority had tested, had poll tested, that drew 75, 80 percent approval
rating; so that was their justification of closing down the process and
bundling all of those bills, H.R. 1 through 6, in a single rule, a
single closed rule, and no opportunity for even Members on their own
side of the aisle, the Democratic majority, the new Members of the
Democratic majority, to have a voice and represent their constituents.
I think it is appalling, Mr. Speaker, that they would do that.
But, also, as we railed against that process in the first 2 weeks, we
had the assurance over and over again of the leadership of the
Democratic majority that once they got through with their 100 hours,
and as Representative King has pointed out, we are up to 147 hours now,
where is the fairness that they promised? Where is the open process?
Here this $463 billion so-called CR or, in layman's terms, continuing
resolution, gets posted on the Internet at 11 o'clock last night. I
don't think that Members of this body were sitting up holding their
breath every 15 minutes checking on the Internet to see if Mr. Obey had
finally posted the bill so that Members could see it and look at it and
analyze it, study it, and hopefully come forward through the Rules
Committee. Certainly there was no committee process in what they have
done here.
And I do not know, maybe my colleagues can answer this question in
just a minute, but I know the Rules Committee did meet today, and I am
not going to hold my breath counting the number of amendments that were
made in order.
But this is unconscionable, Mr. Speaker. First of all, it is not a
CR. A CR would be a continuing resolution to continue to fund the
government at last year's level. In fact, that would indeed save money.
That would save the taxpayers money. This is no CR. A CR is three or
four pages long. In fact, the last time we had a CR to cover an entire
fiscal year was under the Democratic leadership back in 1987 and 1988.
I don't know how long those bills were, but I do not think they were
123 pages, as this monstrosity is, Mr. Speaker.
I have heard this thing called a lot of terms other than a CR. I have
heard some refer to it as a ``CRomnibus.'' To me, and maybe my
colleagues can understand this better because ``CRomnibus'' is a little
difficult to decipher, it looks like a hooker dressed up like a nun.
{time} 1815
Now, I hope everybody can understand what I am talking about there.
This is an appalling embarrassment to this body. And the Democratic
majority talked about, in December and leading up to the election
before that, how, give them the opportunity to lead this body and they
will absolutely eliminate earmarks, totally eliminate earmarks in
finishing up the fiscal 2007 and the fiscal 2008 budget.
This is a giant earmark, or if you want to call it an ``Obeymark.''
There are so many things in here. And, of course, you know we have had
since about 9 o'clock this morning when people came to work, maybe a
little earlier for some of us insomniacs, to study this bill. And the
devil is, of course, in the details.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker how much time do I have left?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cohen). Approximately 30 minutes.
Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I know he is limited in
time, and I know our colleague from Florida is here, as well, and
possibly other Members will be coming to weigh in on this.
But this is appalling, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. I mean, the
Democratic majority has talked about opening up this process and not
doing as we did, as they say we did; but dawn of a new day, to start a
new open process of bipartisanship. Whether they were truthful in that
or not, I think if you say that, if you make that pledge as you ask
people to vote or, in many instances, replace somebody on our side of
the aisle, then you need to fulfill that contract.
That indeed was a pledge that has already been broken. And it does
not have to be that way. It absolutely does not have to be that way.
So I thank the gentleman for allowing me to weigh in on this issue.
With that, I will turn it back over to Mr. King and continue this
dialogue with my colleagues. Thank you.
[[Page H1037]]
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the esteemed gentleman from Georgia, Dr.
Phil, for his input. I did not mean to imply that I was short of time
to deal with it. So if you feel the urge a little later as well, Mr.
Gingrey, I am open to whatever dialogue you may have to bring to this
floor. I appreciate that input.
We are here to represent the American people. We each represent
roughly 600,000, for each of us 435 Members here in the United States
Congress. There is not anybody in this Congress that would concede a
point that there is anybody's constituents that deserve more
representation than theirs.
I will just say it this way. There are no one's constituents in
America that deserve more representation than my constituents. And,
conversely, there are no constituents out there in America that deserve
less. That means you have got to have an open process that provides for
open dialogue, that provides for opportunities along the way to perfect
legislation to avoid unintended consequences and to improve legislation
to perfection if we possibly can.
That is the process that is absolutely missing. It has been totally
usurped. It has been a rug jerked out from underneath this entire
Congress. And the promise of an open process is a broken promise. The
100 hours are up, and no one knows that better than Mr. Feeney from
Florida. I yield to Mr. Feeney.
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my friend from Iowa and to
my good friend from Georgia. And I, too, just got off the last campaign
cycle, and I watched the national newspapers. I saw it in the State of
Florida, where over and over again I heard that there was a new,
reformed Democratic Party, people that believed very differently than
the Republicans in charge here in Washington, that we are going to
reform the process, make it fairer and more transparent. I heard that
we were going to be under new management.
Now I find it a little funny, because as I look at the chairmen of
the committees, we have got one chairman that has been here for 56
years in Congress. We have got chairmen that have been here for 30
years in Congress, for 40 years that have been Chairmen before. So
really it is deja vu in terms of who the leadership is of the important
committees here in Congress. There is no change.
Americans need to know they are going to go back to the Jimmy Carter
high-tax, high-regulation, high-speed, high-unemployment, high-
inflation rates under their so-called new leadership because it is the
same old, same old.
But I was really intent as I was working in my office, studying some
of the crazy things that are coming up in our committee process this
week, Mr. King. And I heard you offer to the new members of the
Democratic majority that say, We are going to be very different, we are
going to be transparent, we are not going to be liberal Democrats, we
are going to maintain a threshold on taxes.
And yet in the very first 2 weeks, what we here have passed without
one amendment allowed, without one committee hearing allowed, without
any debate other than maybe an hour on this floor allowed, with the
results preordained by a maestro--and we have to give her credit; the
Speaker has been a wonderful leader in terms of making the trains run
on time, which we know that people that do not engage in democratic
processes, but engage in totalitarian processes are successfully able
to do.
The first thing that the new majority, conservatives supposedly or
moderates, do is pass PAYGO, which makes its easier to pass tax
increases. The next thing they do is pass a minimum wage bill that
exempts American Samoa. And they pass an energy bill that actually
increases taxes at the pump ultimately on the people in my district
that buy gas.
And, of course, they also gave as part of the Committee of the Whole
here, a vote to the delegate from American Samoa who represents, he is
a friend of mine, he is a great guy, but he represents approximately
60,000 people who are not a State which the Constitution requires in
order for you to have an equal vote here on the floor.
Now, I would tell my friend from Iowa that I have football stadiums
not far from me that hold more than 60,000 people in them. The football
stadiums are not represented by a delegate or a vote in Congress. And
maybe every football stadium with 60,000 or more votes under their new
premise ought to be included
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, just an inquiry then. What are the
odds of the people within your stadiums in Florida with 60,000 or more
people in them, what are the odds of them paying Federal taxes compared
to that of American Samoa?
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, my guess is about 80 percent of them are
either payers of the income tax, the Medicare tax, the Social Security
tax, or some Federal tax.
And with respect to American Samoa, I admire them. I actually think
that they are fortunate. I am envious. They do not pay Federal income
taxes, as the gentleman wisely pointed out. But they have a vote here,
just like my football stadiums with 60,000 people do not have; American
Samoans who do not pay Federal taxes on the Federal income code do pay
taxes.
Now, I will tell my two great friends, I hope that I do not upset
them here, but the States of Georgia and Iowa are two of my favorite
States in the Union. But I happen to be very jealous; and believe that
I was the speaker of the house of the greatest State in the country,
the State of Florida.
And I will have to tell you that passing budgets is a very difficult
deal, passing appropriations bills, it is hard. I like to compare every
budget that I have dealt with at the Federal level or the State level
as like a Clint Eastwood movie; it is part of the good, part the bad,
and part the ugly. The only thing that justifies a budget is the
process.
Where every elected member at the committee level, for all of the
different Appropriations Committees gets to fight for his or her
priorities, where on the House floor you allow amendments, you allow
the entire body to sit down and figure out collectively. And democracy
is an ugly process, but the only thing that justifies the outcome of
budgets, which are like a Clint Eastwood movie, The Good the Bad and
the Ugly, is the process itself.
The process that we witnessed today in the Rules Committee, and my
friend from Georgia alluded to the fact that the Rules Committee
apparently has said that not one single amendment to this omnibus
package that was passed, not by a committee, but was passed by one
Member, this is the Pelosi omnibus package. Nobody else had any control
or say in it. Not one Member had a chance.
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, just a quick point. In these appropriation
bills that come to the floor under regular order, each one of the 13
separate appropriations bills came to the floor with an open rule, an
open process.
Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, traditionally that has always been true.
This has never happened in modern history that any historian of the
House can recollect.
But let me tell you exactly what has happened. I will have to admit,
one of the very few things that I have liked in the first 60 days here
is that the Democrats actually pledged that we are not going to have
earmarks.
Now, they have pledged a lot of things. They violated virtually every
promise that they made. But the earmark pledge is something I really
like. I was one of the outspoken critics, even of Republican earmarks
like the Bridge to Nowhere. But I have to tell you, you have got to
give credit where credit is due, when they will stand up and say, we
are not going to have earmarks. I thought, you know what, I can live by
that policy if every other Member of the House can, or we are going to
have transparent earmarks; everybody has to be honest about what they
are spending the money on.
I want to read to you the definition from The Citizens Against
Government Waste. An earmark is any proposal that does any one of the
following seven things; if you do one of them, you are an earmark. This
is important, because we are facing tomorrow the largest earmark in the
history of the world under this definition that everybody uses, if you
do any one of these things.
If you are requested by only one Chamber of Congress. This bill
tomorrow is only going to be requested by
[[Page H1038]]
the U.S. House, not the Senate. If you are not specifically authorized
by committees in the House. This bill has not been authorized, not one
thing in it has been authorized by any committee.
If there are things in the bill that are not competitively awarded.
Nothing in this bill requires any competitive awards for the new
spending.
Number four, if it is not requested by the President. There are
billions of dollars of spending in this bill that have not been even
seen, let alone requested or reviewed by the President.
Number five, if it exceeds the President's budget request or the
previous year's funding. We have issues here that have never been
greater than in this bill that we have not seen because it is the
Pelosi omnibus package that nobody had a chance to see or vote on.
Number six--remember, any one of those things makes it an earmark;
this qualifies for all five so far--if it is not the subject of
congressional hearings. Well, the funny thing is the Speaker and the
Democratic leadership would not let us have a hearing on any of this
spending. $463 billion, we have not had one minute of hearings, 1
minute of review.
And finally, number seven, if some of the things in the bill serve
only a local or special interest. Now, I will leave you with this, Mr.
King, because I really admire the points you have made. Every taxpayer
is paying the price of this horrible process. It is not just about
process. This is a $463 billion earmark, not because it violates one of
the rules, but all seven rules.
And I would finish with this. I was really offended when Republicans
were in charge of this Chamber and we had a $250 million earmark that I
referred to as the Bridge to Nowhere. The earmark tomorrow is 2,000
times greater than the Bridge to Nowhere. This is the Congress that
supposedly was going to be about reform, ending earmarks, and have
transparency. There is not one pledge that has been made that will not
be broken tomorrow if this bill passes.
With that, I thank my friend.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Feeney, for adding the clarity to
this issue and putting the numbers down and for also listing into the
Congressional Record the seven points, any one of which qualifies as an
earmark, all of which will be breaking the promise tomorrow, and 2,000
times larger than that large earmark that 80-some percent of America
understands as the Bridge to Nowhere.
I would point out that there is a way to address this. And I have not
been necessarily a critic of well-managed earmarks, as long as they are
within the budget and as long as it is a Member initiative that
actually is researched and debated, and it is open and it is public,
there is an opportunity to go in and strike it out.
But the problem with the earmarks has been, they show up after it is
too late, and the bill comes to the floor, and there is not time to
read the bill, and not time to prepare amendments; or they come up in a
conference, and then here comes the conference report with a whole
stack of earmarks in there that are agreed to by the conference
committee, but not aware, not made aware to the rest of the Members,
and no access to it.
So I looked at this. And I thought, how can we fix this? And we have
done some things with earmarks. But last year, in the middle of this,
about this time a year ago, I began grinding and churning my way
through and created an act called the Cut Act. And I have drafted and
filed that information; I believe that both gentlemen here on the floor
are cosponsors of that Cut Act.
But what that Act does, Mr. Speaker, is it recognizes that there will
be legislation passed off the floor of this Congress, and that Members
will not have an opportunity to act on that legislation, on that
appropriation, and that there will be earmarks in there that are either
identified or may be not identified, but maybe they are objectionable
to the American people.
And it recognizes, Mr. Speaker, that this is an instantaneous
Information Age if we give access on the Internet to the people in this
country, all of whom have access to the Internet in one form or
another.
We have not done that. We need to put sunlight on everything that we
do. We need to let them have real-time bloggers be able to access all
of the bills that are filed, all of the amendments that are filed. They
need to be able to track this whole process. But then once we get that
system set up and we provide sunlight, the Cut Act allows, recognizes
that those appropriations bills will find their way over to the
President's desk, and he will sign them to keep this government
running.
{time} 1830
And this is that there will be a whole collection of objectionable,
irresponsible spending to projects that comes to mind. The bridge was
referenced by Mr. Feeney. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame strikes me as
something that could be privately funded if we need one. There are a
number of others out there that are objectionable earmarks. But if we
pass the CUT Act, and the President signs the appropriation bill and
the bloggers light up and they start sending this in and it becomes a
national issue, or even just a tip that goes to a certain Member of
Congress, like Mr. Gingrey for example, we could, under the CUT Act,
once each quarter, four times a year, provide under the rule so that a
bill would be brought to the floor that would allow for the rescission
of any one of those individual line items.
So the Shell bill might come to the floor. Any Member would bring an
amendment that would say I want to eliminate the funding for the
Cowgirl Hall of Fame. We put it up here on the board. We vote it up or
down. We do that to every single line item if we chose to do that, and
it might take a long time to debate that first bill.
Mr. GINGREY. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Gingrey).
Mr. GINGREY. And I hope I won't offend the gentleman, but just as he
is pointing out, these earmarks are there but they are selected, in
this instance, by one person. And as you start enumerating a few, like
the ones that you have already mentioned, I have got to also say that
the tropical rainforest in Iowa is back at $44.6 million. Now, I don't
know how the gentleman feels about that one, but that is the whole
point here. A CR is supposed to save money. It is literally supposed to
save the taxpayers money, because instead of increasing the amount of
spending at a rate of inflation or consumer price index, you go back to
the last year and you just continue that process.
So, in fact, if we had done that, if we had this year-long CR, we are
talking about maybe saving $6.1 billion. But, no, what the Democratic
leadership of a committee of one or two decides to do is under that
budget cap authority to plus this thing all the way up from 2006 levels
to the budget cap, and that is an additional $6.11 billion burden on
the taxpayer.
As I mentioned earlier, I won't repeat the phrase I used in
referencing this bill. But people are going to call it all kind of
things in addition to CRomnibus. But really it is a CR on steroids.
Maybe we should call it a steroid.
And with that I will turn it back over to the gentleman from Iowa for
the continuation of this discussion
Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, again I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Gingrey) for reminding me about some of the earmarks that we have out
there. And the list is long. And my point on this is the American
people can make that list a lot longer. And at least in theory, any
piece of appropriation that comes across this floor that makes it
through the process should have the majority support of the House of
Representatives. It ought to have the majority support of the United
States Senate. We ought to agree on that number, and it should go to
the President for his signature. That is the process that is structured
within our constitution. That is the process as the American people
envision it. That is the process that we are struggling to attain here,
that will not be, even presumed to be happening tomorrow when this--not
a CR, but this omnibus spending bill which is a catch-all for every
single appropriation that goes into discretionary spending for the rest
of--until the first day of October is when this is over.
And, again, I am so sorry for the freshmen who come here that right
now don't know any better, and they
[[Page H1039]]
aren't even outraged. They have been led, taken by the hand and led
down the primrose path. And I have offered them time and again, come
down here. I would be happy to yield. Tell me what legislation you have
had a voice in. What have you made a difference in? Did you make the
promise to represent your constituents or didn't you? Yes, you did.
Obviously everybody makes that promise. So didn't you have some high
and shining ideals? When you see the flag go up over the Capitol
doesn't that make your heart beat a little faster? Don't you get that
feeling in your stomach and that swelling sense of pride when you look
up at the dome and that you are here to represent the American people
of the United States Congress?
But my news to you is you are not representing them. You are not
being allowed to represent them. You aren't even a voice. You haven't
been heard. Your input is not there. The expertise that you bring with
your background, whatever it might be, has no value in this place. It
is just a handful of people in the cabal that decide what is coming
down here, the same ones that make the promise that there is going to
be that opportunity, freshman, for you to be able to have that kind of
input.
So, Mr. Speaker, I illustrate that and the absence of rebuttal here
on this floor is confirmation of my statement of my position and that
of Mr. Gingrey and that of Mr. Feeney here this afternoon. The absence
of rebuttal speaks loudly and it echoes in my ears.
But on the earmark part of this, that is why I drafted the CUT Act,
so that this Congress could be able to eliminate any line item that did
not have the majority support of the House and the Senate and the
President, and it recognizes that the President would sign an
appropriations bill and that money would get off his desk and go to the
agencies, wherever it might be, and it takes them sometimes the whole
year to spend the last dollar. And at any point where we rescinded that
funding, it would go to reduce the national debt automatically, and
then that fund would no longer be available to whatever entity was
about to receive it.
That is one way that gives Congress, the CUT Act gives Congress a
line item veto. And that is the piece of policy that we need to get
resolved here in this Congress, along with many others. But the open
process, and this is going to be and has been so far, Mr. Speaker, a
very closed process, a process so closed that I will point out that,
not just a matter of information, I mean, I have sent my staff down to
the majority leader's office to try to find out what the criteria was
for the clock, or what is the criteria for providing and offering
amendments; when is this draconian martial-law going to be lifted, this
open process that is promised.
And I want to point out, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper)
was doing a national television program here on the news, the beginning
of the 110th Congress, a couple of days before we gaveled in. And they
said to him, but you are going to suspend all the rules and you are
going to drive all this legislation through without input from Members
on either side. And he got kind of a funny look on his face and he
said, well, just please, will you give us a little patience. Have some
patience and let us get through this process. And once we get these six
bills passed, you are going to see the most open, democratic Congress
in history.
Mr. Cooper, I am waiting for you, too. I would be very happy to
yield.
That is not the case today. The hundred hours is clearly up. The
process is not open, and the American people are not being heard. They
didn't decide they were going to anoint some people with a royalty
position, whether they allege that they are the most powerful woman in
the world or not. This is a government that rules by the consent of the
people. And the people did not give their consent to a process that is
not an open process, a process that muzzles 99 percent of the Members
in this Congress.
And clearly, they are not here to speak up because they know they
don't have a voice and they don't have an argument. And so we are going
to continue to push on this process. We are going to go before the
Rules Committee. I took an amendment up before the Rules Committee, and
there were a number of us that did. We all know the results of that,
the charade in the Rules Committee, which is, bring your amendment up.
You can offer your amendment up here, but before you come up here, we
are going to tell you we are not going to accept a single one, even if
it is some kind of revelation. If it is an epiphany that just fixes the
whole thing, we are not going to consider it because the meat cleaver
has come down.
So we are going through a charade. No amendments, but come here and
argue them anyway if you want to and we will sit through this and we
will put one or two people up there and we will rotate and we will get
through this process. And then we will say, why are you complaining? We
had a rules process. You just didn't have any amendments with any
merit. Oh, really? No amendments with any merit is the same result as
no input into the process, Mr. Speaker. This government cannot function
with that.
And I will also point out that the House of Representatives is where
all the appropriations has to start. That is what the Constitution says
and that is what we need to follow. But this bill, this omnibus bill,
is going to go over to the Senate, over to those 100 Senators over
there, and you can bet that they are going to be offering amendments
and they are going to be improving this omnibus spending bill, and they
are going to be fixing this all the way through their process. So their
voice will be heard. And then we will get an amended omnibus bill back
here again, and I would submit this question, will then, Mr. Speaker,
will it come to the floor again with no opportunity for amendments
again? And if that is the case, why have we ceded the improvement
process to the United States Senate?
We are the hot cup of coffee here, and they are the saucer to cool it
in. We are supposed to be the quick reaction force that has the
elections every 2 years, so that vigor that comes with a new freshman
class and that risk of being up for re-election every 2 years, it keeps
us tuned in with our fingers on the pulse of the American people who
can be heard in the legislative process.
The hot cup of coffee, the quick reaction force, the storm troops
that are going to come in and fix things quickly, especially in the
change-over of a majority, Mr. Speaker, is just what our Founding
Fathers envisioned when they drafted our Constitution and set up this
miraculous system of government that we have. But the leadership in
this House of Representatives has handed over the amendment process to
the United States Senate which they have a legitimate claim to their
version of it, we also have a legitimate claim to ours and a
constitutional duty to do so that has been usurped by this decision to
make a promise and have that promise of 100 hours be sacrosanct and
then like that draconian approach so much of not being challenged that
they go ahead and shut the clock off at 42 hours and 25 minutes.
And we could go on in perpetuity until the American people revolt at
the polls. That is what is coming. You are going to see mistake after
mistake after mistake. One of those examples would be the Minimum Wage
Act, American Samoa, and being exempted from the Minimum Wage Act of
all of The states and territories of the United States of America, one
place on the map with 60,000 people, we find out after the fact, after
the minimum wage bill is passed, is exempted from the minimum wage.
Well, if you can legislate wages to go up and help people, which is the
argument that came out of this side of the aisle continually, Mr.
Speaker, then why can't you do so in American Samoa? What is wrong with
them that they don't deserve a raise like everybody else got in America
that was working for a minimum wage? And the answer that I get back is,
well, we had to do that because the tuna market there won't sustain
this. The international competition won't sustain higher wages, so we
would lose that to Asia or maybe South American companies that can
produce that tuna cheaper than they can in the American Samoa.
Well, that is called competition. And how is it that Democrats can
understand the effect of competition and the deleterious effect of
minimum wage on a small business, large business in a small microcosm
of a location like American Samoa? They can understand
[[Page H1040]]
it when it is a microcosm, but they can't understand it when it is 300
million people in a macrocosm. It is the same principle that applies,
Mr. Speaker. But that is a fatal flaw of this approach of a closed
process rather than an open process. That is what happens, Mr. Speaker,
when we don't allow for amendments. And then things start to smell
fishy.
What was the reason?
I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Gingrey).
Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just wanted to
point out, and I am sure the gentleman would agree with me, that there
are things in this so-called CR that we approve of. As I look through
the list, and of course, I have got a lot more looking to do, but as I
see things like an increase in Pell Grants to $260 up to $4,310, I
think that is good. And additional funding for the Head Start program.
And I could go on and on and on. There are a number of things here that
I see that I could vote in favor of, but there are a number that I
would be opposed to.
And just as the gentleman points out, especially for the new Members
on both sides of the aisle to not have an opportunity to go through
regular order and a committee markup process, go to the Rules Committee
with their amendments, I am talking now about majority Member
amendments, things that they have heard about, as you pointed out, Mr.
King, from their constituents, as they campaigned for the very first
time for Congress and the excitement of that, and you pointed that out
as well. It is just sad. It really is sad. And if it wasn't so sad, it
would be almost laughable.
So I just want to say that, again, it is not that, as I register
tomorrow my vote against this, it is unfortunate because there are some
things in here that I would be in favor of. But I am going to be voting
against the usurp of power and putting the process under the jackboot
of the new majority.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
And I will say that my sympathy and heart goes out to especially
freshmen Members of Congress when they go back home to their town hall
meetings, and I would just ask you, out there, and Mr. Speaker, I
convey that message to the people in America, that when these freshman
especially show up for their first town hall meeting, I would say to
the citizens, stand up and ask them, what has been your input? What has
been your impact? How have you kept your promise so far? What do you
think of the process? What has been your involvement? Have you produced
any amendments? Have you done anything to impact this process
whatsoever? And their answer is going to be ``no.'' You need to
challenge them, Mr. Speaker, to come back here and open up this
process.
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